Saturday, February 4, 2012

Classical Frog Enigma

An Enigma Machine was delivered to our church of all places,
so we were summoned to admire the timeless treasure. Between the unexpectedness of
having this almost classical object on the minister’s desk and the strangeness of
everyone’s apathetic response to it, no one noticed that the man who came with the
Machine had a frog on his coat. The frog was alive, sitting on his shoulder. She
pointed at it slowly, trying not to scare the frog with bulging eyes, or the
man. No one reacted. The secretary shrugged even. After a while of pretending
not to see the green frog, she couldn’t take it anymore. She interrupted the
man’s explanation about the Machine abruptly.

“Excuse me. Why do you have a frog on your
shoulder?” The man looked at her and shrugged.

“It doesn’t make sense.”

“I got it in a farm around here.”

“Yes, but the city is no place to be carrying a
frog on your shoulder. You’d be better off carrying a monkey than a frog.”

Everyone looked at her in unison and nodded.

“It’s a self-sacrifice thing,” the man said.
“It came with the Enigma Machine.”

Everyone smiled relieved as if it made a lot
of sense all of a sudden. Yes, it came with the Enigma Machine. That was the perfect
explanation.